In this paper, panel data method is used to estimate the electricity demand function using data from China, Hong Kong, Korea and Philippines over 1984-1999. Three refinement variables: economic structures, utilization ratio and urbanization ratios are incorporated in this study to fill the gap of the existing literatures. We show that the traditionally used ordinary least squares method tends to overestimate the effect of economic structure and urbanization process, while the impact of energy price and utilization ratio are underestimated. Moreover, the price and income elasticities are found to be -0.77 and -0.26 respectively, which are different from the results in existing literatures which are mainly based on U.S. and European observations....[ Read more ]

In this paper, panel data method is used to estimate the electricity demand function using data from China, Hong Kong, Korea and Philippines over 1984-1999. Three refinement variables: economic structures, utilization ratio and urbanization ratios are incorporated in this study to fill the gap of the existing literatures. We show that the traditionally used ordinary least squares method tends to overestimate the effect of economic structure and urbanization process, while the impact of energy price and utilization ratio are underestimated. Moreover, the price and income elasticities are found to be -0.77 and -0.26 respectively, which are different from the results in existing literatures which are mainly based on U.S. and European observations.

The refinement variables of this paper show that economic structure does have significant effect on energy demand, with industrial production, particularly manufacturing production, has the greatest impact. Utilization ratio, which can act as a proxy of energy supply adequacy, have negative effect on the price elasticity. Urbanization ratio, another measure of economic development, is showed to increase the income elasticity of energy and decrease the price elasticity.